Before writing this review of Eat, Pray, Love (2010), I read what some other Catholic thinkers had to say about the film. As will hopefully become apparent from the rest of what I have to say, there are some tantalizing aspects of it that draw in anyone on a “spiritual journey.”  That phrase is a catch all, but no less descriptive of what us Catholics are called to do.  Indeed, in my most recent meeting with my spiritual director, we got into some of the semantics of the path towards God on which we should all be.  The term also summarizes the protagonist, Elizabeth “Liz” Gilbert (Julia Roberts).  As such, there were several moments while watching it, as always with my Catholic eyes wide open, that gave me pause.  Thus, when sitting down to share my views, I did not want to stray away from sound theology in giving what I believe will be a more balanced analysis than what you might be expecting.  What I will tell you up front, though, is that while Liz may have found the last of those three eponymous directives, her journey will ultimately be incomplete.  This is because while the film talks a lot about God, He is largely absent from it.  Does that mean this movie is godless?  Read on and make up your own mind.

At the start of Eat, Pray, Love, Liz is doing a lot of the first thing, but little of the other two.  Unsurprisingly, these leave her empty and searching for answers, for which she turns to a Bali medicine man named Ketut Liyer (Hadi Subiyanto).  He gives her a prophecy for her life that she takes graciously, pertaining to her relationships and plans for the next year, and returns to the United States.  She works as a travel writer, and is married to Stephen (Billy Crudup).  Liz and Stephen attend a party hosted by her best friend, Delia Shiraz (Viola Davis).  Delia and her husband, Andy Shiraz (Mike O’Malley), are celebrating the birth of their baby.  The occasion has Liz wondering about her own future, and with Stephen not wanting to come with her on her next excursion to Aruba, she decides that she wants a divorce.  As this is being finalized, she attends the opening of a play, later meeting its male lead, David (James Franco).  Though he is younger, they begin an affair.  This leads her into Hindu practices, giving herself fully over to whatever he is into as a way of separating herself from the pain of her failed marriage.  Stephen fights for their relationship at their mediation, but she is firm in saying that she has moved on.  Still, Liz’s relationship with David is not as fulfilling as she would like, and she begins thinking that Ketut’s words are coming true.  Thus, she decides to embark on a year of travel.  She will live in Italy, India, and Bali.  David tries to put a positive spin on this, but she later sends him an email saying that it is final.  In the meantime, she settles into her stay in Rome, spending time with some friends that she meets while there, and mainly just doing the first word in the title.  She finds happiness, but she is still in search of healing.  Thus, it is off to India.  While there, she lives in what is called an ashram.  This particularly interested this Catholic because it functions a lot like a monastery, except you do not have to be a monk or nun, and you can come and go as you please.  While you are there, however, you are expected to help do chores around the place, and hers involves scrubbing floors.  She also meets, and eventually befriends, Richard (Richard Jenkins), a fellow American from Texas.  He is there because, like her, he is escaping some of the problems he has had with relationships and other concomitant issues.  When Liz first arrives at the ashram, she is having trouble focusing on mantras during meditation.  Richard, because he has been through similar ordeals, can easily see her struggles and acts as a sort of spiritual guide.  His main bit of advice is to forgive herself before she can begin to get over her troubles.  This mainly pertains to Stephen, which she does in her mind before it is time to travel to Bali.  Not long after getting to this part of Indonesia, Liz goes to see Ketut to renew their acquaintance.  He says that he does not remember her until she shows him a picture he had given her before she left the first time.  To repay his prophecy that brought returned her to the island, she offers to assist him in copying down some of the collected texts of previous medicine men from whom he inherited his current station.  She is also given a regimen to follow to continue her spiritual growth.  It is while following this routine that Liz is nearly ran over by Felipe (Javier Bardem), a Brazilian businessman pursuing his affairs while living in Bali.  He is apologetic, and eventually wears down her initial disapprobation with continued romantic overtures.  Despite her growing attachment to him, she is reticent to get back into a relationship and disrupt the balance she feels that she has found over the past year.  Thus, when he asks her to go away with him for a week, talking about a potential future with her and telling her he loves her, she ends the relationship.  The day she is to return to the United States, she goes to Ketut to say goodbye, and he asks about Felipe.  When Liz confesses what she has done, Ketut reminds her that one needs unbalance in love to find balance in life.  This is all she needs for her to realize her mistake, and she arranges for Felipe to meet her on a nearby dock.  They then take a boat into the sunset.

The line that almost got me in Eat, Pray, Love is when Liz tells us that what she learned about praying is that “God dwells within you as you.”  One of the things I have often said about the Faith life is that God talks to each of us in an individual way that is meant for only us to recognize.  That is a statement that I stand by, but the movie made me realize that it can be misleading.  God is not just the Savior of myself, or you, but of all us.  We get the word “Catholic” from the Greek, which basically translates as “universal.”  At the time of its founding, it was intended to speak for the whole world.  Since that task has largely been accomplished by the Church over the past two millennia, I would extend its meaning to God in general.  There is only one God, and He over all.  What is striking to me in light of this idea is that I do not think the religions that are covered in this movie disagree with this statement.  They will talk about one God, but then put their own interpretation of how He operates, thus their traditions.  This is part of why Liz’s statement is so dangerous.  It also gets back to what I said at the beginning of the last paragraph about Liz’s search for answers.  Liz is one of many in the West who, thanks to a number of historical factors that I will not discuss, are causing them to look for their answers in places other than the Church.  To counter this, I will give you a lesson from a real Eastern religious leader, the fourteenth Dalai Lama.  In The Art of Happiness (1998), he suggested that it is possible to obtain enlightenment by faithfully practicing the religion in which you were raised.  This had an impact on my returning to Catholicism.  It is also an incomplete sentiment.  Enlightenment is a human construct, as false as people like Liz cherry picking from cultures to find what she calls truth.  There is only one Truth, and that is God and His established Church.  It provides the context and framework for everything Liz seeks.

This was largely the gist of what other Catholic writers have to say about Eat, Pray, Love.  They enjoyed her journey, but find it incomplete without God.  Faith is not a matter of us choosing what works for us, or what can be disregarded.  It is about submitting yourself to a higher power because He knows best what is good for us.  Ultimately, Liz chooses her own prerogatives instead of following God.  There are some lessons to be learned from her journey, but it is, in the end, dissatisfying.